No Shut-eye after watching “Shutter Island”

Paramount Pictures delayed the releasing of “Shutter Island” in October last year to this February, and it appears as if the gamble paid off. It topped this week’s Box Office, grossing 40.2 million.

The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, bombards the viewer with flashbacks of the main character’s past, creating confusion and interest. The film is filled with suspense and a handful of startling action sequences. The movie lasts two hours and eighteen minutes, and is worth all time spent. Overall, the movie gets an eight out of ten.

The film is based of the 2003 novel by Dennis Lehane and is about two U.S. Marshals, Teddy Daniels, (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). They arrive at Shutter Island, a hospital for the criminally insane, and investigate the disappearance of a patient. Teddy also has his own reason for going to the island-to find an inmate named Laeddis, who set a fire that had killed his wife a few years earlier.

As Teddy and his partner roam the island in search for clues, you learn about his past in World War 2, and the death of his wife. He also becomes overwhelmed with hallucinations of various things, including his dead wife. Early on, they decide to leave the island, but are unable to due to a hurricane.

The whole island and its patients have a strange feel to them, like they’re hiding something, and the director of the mental hospital is rather unhelpful and has never heard of the patient Leaddis. The Marshals also get strict orders that they are not to enter ward C and that the lighthouse surrounded by guards with weapons is ‘nothing’, just a sewage treatment plant or something of the sort. Because of this, Teddy develops a conspiracy that the people of Shutter Island must be hiding something, and decides to stay on the island and uncover the mystery.

The beginning of the film is a little dry and predictable, but I believe they did that to lull you into a sense that you knew what was coming, so that the epic plot twists would be more dramatic. Shutter Island is worth going to see once and maybe even twice. The ending is very impressive and leaves you with your mouth hanging wide open.